The Emilia Romagna region’s policies for people and goods mobility: a shift towards multimodality and electric mobility

Abstract:

The two main initiatives of the Emilia–Romagna Region are:

A. An integrated public transport fare system called STIMER/MI MUOVO.
The system will include trains, buses, public bike and car sharing, as well as the Park and Ride service.

The main objectives of the measure are to:
1. Improve the public transport offer;
2. Increase usage of public transport and other sustainable mobility means in the Region.

The integrated payment system will permit passengers to use different modes of public transport with
the same electronic ticket, either a contactless card or a card with a magnetic stripe and with the fare depending on the distance and not on the transport mode.
The new system will not only make payment easier and offer a discount to season ticket holders but will also allow the city to monitor passenger flows.
This information will help to better organise the public transport network according to users’ needs.
B. A shift towards electric mobility though the integration in the STIMER/MI MUOVO initiative of the regional Electric Mobility Project

STIMER started in 2008 and the shift towards electric mobility started in 2009 with a programme for disposing and recycling of bikes and motorbikes to be substituted by electric equivalent.

Now STIMER/MI MUOVO is fully operative

The electric project MI MUOVO Elettrico has been gradually implemented through a set of memorandum of understanding with many different actors:

i. With ENEL (2010) – the Italy’s largest power company­ ‐ on three pilot projects for building a public available infrastructure of Charge Points for Electric Vehicles in the cities of Bologna, Reggio Emilia e Rimini.
ii. With HERA S.p.A. (2011) – the public–private multi-­utility in environmental water and energy services – to develop the charges points for electric vehicles also in the cities of Imola and Modena.
iii. With CEI-­‐CIVES (2011) – the Italian branch of AVERE– the European Association for Battery, Hybrid and Fuel-­‐Cell Electric Vehicles for a set of supporting initiative for the diffusion of electric and hybrid vehicles, including bikes and motorbikes.
iv. Eventually the Region started in 2011 a coordination activity with the regional town councils to develop a shared criterion for allowing electric vehicles to enter in the traffic restricted areas.
v. Recently all the chief towns of the region and Imola are involved in the charge points development. It means that the forecast for the year 2013 is up to 120 charge points.
vi. Besides the public available charge points ENEL allows clients to have at home a specific plug for the electric vehicles.

What should be noted, as to the STIMER/MI MUOVO project, is that the actor of the new public policies on mobility is the Regional Government; it doesn’t imply that the city councils of the region, starting from Bologna, the regional capital, have played a passive role.
The regional drive is important in a region such as Emilia Romagna, that is polycentric and with relevant daily intraregional commuting traffic.

A relevant feature of the MI MUOVO Elettrico project is that the target is not only the people mobility but also the mobility of goods inside the urban centres of the region and among the industrial areas,according to the new just-­in-­‐time industrial standard.
Emilia Romagna for geographical reasons is a national hub for all kind of North–South traffic routes, and modalities (railway, car freight), so the delivery of goods is a very critical problem to be tackled.